A FEW POINTS ABOUT ASU’S ROWING TEAMS, AND ABOUT CREW IN GENERAL
● Rowing is the ultimate team sport;
there are no individual stars in crew. A
boat wins or loses together, so no rower can have a good race when the boat has
a bad race. Rowing also is the most mentally
and physically challenging sport. Because
of the simultaneous involvement of the large muscles in the legs, back and
arms, rowing burns more calories per minute than running, cycling, swimming, or
any other sport. Also, rowers "go
anaerobic" at both the start and finish of a race – the only sport in
which competitors are required to go above and beyond their aerobic capacities
twice within a single event.
Consequently, rowers must train together to develop their timing and
form as a team, and must train as individual athletes to build power and
conditioning.
● Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate
sport in the United States; the first sporting event between teams from
different colleges was the 1852 Yale-Harvard race. But rowing is one of the newest
intercollegiate sports in Arizona. Until
Tempe Town Lake opened in 1999, there was no body of water suitable for rowing near
any Arizona college or university.
● Shortly after Tempe Town Lake opened,
a few ASU students came together and founded a rowing club. Almost as soon as ASU students started
rowing, they started looking to race against other crews. ASU’s student rowing club rapidly evolved
into the ASU Women’s Crew and the ASU Men’s Crew, Arizona’s first intercollegiate
rowing teams.
● In the beginning, the ASU crews
struggled. Funded entirely with dues
paid by the students themselves, the ASU crews barely could afford to rent even
basic equipment, leaving no money to pay for racing-quality boats or for travel
(as the only collegiate crews in Arizona, the ASU crews must travel to compete
against other collegiate crews).
● In 2007, parents of ASU rowers and
other supporters of the ASU crews came together and founded the Arizona
Collegiate Rowing Foundation (“ACRF”), an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3)
organization. Since 2007, ACRF has
acquired racing-quality boats and other equipment for both the ASU Men’s Crew
and the ASU Women’s Crew. ACRF also has
helped fund travel to many out-of-state regattas, primarily in California but
also as far away as Pennsylvania.
● The ASU crews still receive little
support from the University itself. The crews
are not part of the Athletic Department and receive no Athletic Department
funding. Aside from funds raised by
ACRF, the crews continue to be almost exclusively student-funded. There are no crew scholarships for student
participants, and all crew coaches are volunteers who receive no regular salary
or other compensation from the University.
● Rowing and academic excellence go
together. Across the country,
participants in crew consistently have among the highest GPAs not only among all
student-athletes, but also among the entire student body. Crew alumni also consistently go on to become
among a school’s most successful graduates.
An investment in the ASU crews is an investment in today’s ASU students,
in the University itself, and in the community that ASU serves.